Dahbia Benkired will be tried at the assizes for murder “accompanied or preceded by rape, torture or acts of barbarity”

No criminal irresponsibility for Dahbia Benkired: a Parisian investigating judge ordered a criminal trial on Friday, November 15 for this Algerian born in 1998 accused of the murder “barbarian” of Lola, 12 years old, at the end of 2022, in Paris, which caused a national stir.

Asked, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed the information obtained by Agence France-Presse (AFP), from a source close to the case, according to which Dahbia Benkired would be tried for “the murder of a minor aged 15 accompanied or preceded by rape, torture or barbaric acts as well as for rape committed against a minor with torture or barbaric acts”in accordance with his requisitions. Dahbia Benkired faces life imprisonment.

Lawyer for Lola’s family, M^e Clotilde Lepetit greeted Friday “an instruction which shows the seriousness of the work which has been devoted to this extraordinary criminal case”. Lola’s mother, « M^me Daviet wanted the highest level of legal debate to be held so that the terrible crimes committed against his daughter could be judged. We will have it”estimated the lawyer.

“We hope that the debates necessary for judicial truth will take place calmly, far from the media agitation and the nonsense of social networks”reacted to AFP M^es Alexandre Silva and Lucile Bertier, lawyers of Dahbia Benkired.

On Friday October 14, 2022, Lola, who had not returned from college in the afternoon, was found lifeless in a plastic box, in the interior courtyard of the building in the capital, where she lived. While looking for his daughter, her father, a caretaker of the residence who has since died, had seen Lola enter the hall with an unknown woman on the video surveillance images. The latter left the building around 5 p.m., pulling heavy luggage, including a plastic trunk.

The anti-crime brigade had arrested Dahbia Benkired on Saturday morning, a young Algerian born in 1998, who entered France legally in 2016 with a student residence permit, under the obligation to leave French territory for two months. The non-execution of this measure had aroused virulent criticism from the right and the far right.

“Dangerousness”

The government in return castigated “indecency” of this “political recovery”. Several hundred people, including many college students, took part in a moving white march in tribute to Lola.

“It is in these difficult times, of extreme violence, that the best rubs shoulders with the worst”his mother had declared to the crowd. “The best is you, here present, it’s solidarity, it’s fraternity (…). The worst is the use of our daughter’s image for commercial or political purposes”she denounced.

During her police custody, Dahbia Benkired said she had “imposed [à Lola] to shower, before committing sexual assaults and other violence against her that resulted in death. She would have hidden the body in the crate”reported, at the time, in a press release, the Paris prosecutor, Laure Beccuau. The autopsy revealed that Lola died of asphyxiation. His body showed “multiple other lesions”especially at the neck, but not “traumatic injury to the sexual sphere”.

According to the source close to the case, the final order notes that Dahbia Benkired did everything to hide her crime. At the end of her indictment, she was incarcerated, notably in a unit for difficult patients.

According to the prosecution, an initial psychiatric assessment concluded that the accused did not suffer from“no psychological or neuropsychological disorder having abolished or altered his discernment”even if “on a social level [et non sur le plan psychiatrique]its dangerousness had to attract all the attention”.

According to the public prosecutor, two other doctors then concluded that “the existence of manipulative behavior resulting from a pathological personality or a strategy, and not from a major psychiatric pathology”.

According to the source close to the case, a dismissal of the case was ordered for a man who transported Dahbia Benkired with the plastic trunk and took her into his home for a time, although, according to this source, the judge noted in his order that he thought too little about the contents of the trunk.